


Dance With Me

by Morgyn Leri (morgynleri)



Series: Donna and Nine [1]
Category: Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: F/M, GFY
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-12-08
Updated: 2012-12-08
Packaged: 2017-11-20 16:02:59
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,230
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/587153
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/morgynleri/pseuds/Morgyn%20Leri
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"I'm crossing your timeline. You haven't met me yet." She didn't actually remember how she knew that, but the knowledge, at least, was still there. Not his memories, though, she didn't think.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Dance With Me

It was almost closing time at the pub when she met him. He wasn't anything remarkable, but she could swear he was just a bit familiar. Of course, that could also have been exhaustion and the handful of fruity drinks that she'd had making everyone just that little bit familiar.

After he'd rescued her from the publican who had been thinking she looked like a particularly nice meal, and asked his name so she could thank him properly, she didn't actually remember much more than a sudden, searing pain. Burning behind her eyes and down her spine, and she could have sworn she was going to die.

"You should be dead."

His voice interrupted her internal musings, and Donna pried her eyes open with some effort. A bit surprised at the concern, and more at the fact she wasn't dead, as he'd just observed she should be. Blue eyes, ears, the leather jacket. Not the Doctor she'd first met. The one before him?

"I'm crossing your timeline. You haven't met me yet." She didn't actually remember how she knew that, but the knowledge, at least, was still there. Not his memories, though, she didn't think.

"Four days ago, running from the..."

"No, you haven't met me yet." Donna interrupted him, glaring. "You didn't recognize me when I ended up on your TARDIS. You were a skinny streak of nothing. Will be? Pinstriped suit and floppy brown hair."

"Not him yet." Definitely a regeneration before she'd met the Doctor, then. The one right before, if she could trust the fleeting impressions of lost memories.

"I remembered more than this. Remembered your memories." She frowned. "They're gone."

"All gone, what's not yours. Should have done it in the first place." He sounded disapproving of his next self.

"Yeah, you should of. Doesn't change what you will do."

"Did do."

"You can't go changing your timeline, not for me." Donna struggled to shove herself up, glaring at him.

The Doctor shrugged. "I can forget what I need to, for as long as I need to." He came closer, sliding one cool hand behind her shoulders to help her sit up. "Just crossed timelines."

"No paradox, no Reapers, none of that?" She eyed him skeptically as he grinned. "No making me forget later?"

"None of that." The Doctor's hand lingered on her shoulder a moment longer than needed, and she leaned into him a bit, glad for the contact.

"No more of my mum and grandad tiptoeing around me like I've gotten fragile all of a sudden." Donna hadn't been sure what to make of their behavior in the last couple of months, though now she'd wager they'd been trying to keep her from finding out what she'd forgotten. Keep her from finding out, and having her brain melt under the strain.

"Nope." The Doctor stepped away from the bed she'd woken up in, sitting in a chair pulled up next to a small table. Looking thoughtful for a long moment before he asked her if she wanted to travel with him. Just for a while.

* * *

He let her choose their destination when she was finally out of bed, someplace far out of her time and galaxy, bright lights and music with an infectious beat. Dragging him out on the dance floor despite his protests that he didn't dance, and especially not to music like this.

Shopping at the largest mall in the universe, a billion years after everyone she knew would be dead and dust, running for their lives after pissing off some tyrant with delusions of galactic domination and some technology far beyond his time and culture. Falling, laughing, through the doors of the TARDIS, working in concert to take her into the Vortex and send her hurtling through time and space.

Spending hours in the console room pretending to read a book while she watched him fiddle with the TARDIS. Donna hadn't thought much of the Doctor who'd invited her to travel with her first, not as more than a travel partner - and possibly a little lost boy who needed someone to set him limits. But this one made her wonder, with the face he called daft, and his desire not just to help those in trouble, but to find some way to give people a second chance where his next regeneration would just tear them down.

It was after another near-miss that she first kissed him, startling herself almost as much as him. Surprised more, perhaps, when he kissed her back, gentle and warm. Entirely chaste, but still affectionate. She raised an eyebrow at him when he drew back. "Is that all you got, Doctor?"

He paused in setting the controls to hold them in the Vortex, looking at her across the console. "What do you want, Donna?" Not dismissing, just curious. Waiting, she thought, to decide if he wanted to run until after he knew what he would be running from.

"You and me, Doctor. I said forever before you stole my memories." Donna watched him steadily, alert for the tiny cues that said he was going to avoid, or run. "Won't get it, I know that." She shrugged, crossing her arms across her chest self-consciously. Wondering when she'd lost her nerve when it came to the Doctor, though she knew she'd done it before.

Throwing the final switch, the Doctor moved to lean against the railing, arms crossed as he watched her, waiting. Closer, but only in physical distance. Still safe behind his armor, while she worked out what it was, exactly, that she wanted.

"Dance with me?" she finally asked, remembering something the Doctor - skinny streak of nothing that he was - had said about dancing. And Jack, but that didn't matter here and now.

The Doctor's eyebrows went up, and he shifted, uncrossing his arms as he pushed away from the railing. Soft music playing from hidden speakers as the TARDIS picked up on some thought of his. Providing something to dance to, if that was the sort of dance she was looking for.

She caught his jacket as soon as he came within reach, pulling him closer, holding his gaze as she leaned in to kiss him again. "Not that sort of dancing."

His hands came up after a moment, cupping her face as he pulled back, looking at her with an almost unreadable expression that made her stomach start to churn with nervous dread. His thumbs rubbed against her temples a moment before settling there, his voice quiet as he asked if she would trust him. A feather-light brush against her mind accompanied the question, and her breath hitched slightly. Trust him in her mind?

She nodded, unable to speak, her eyes closing as he leaned down to kiss her again, slow and gentle as he brushed against her mind again. Delicate, like the sweep of a moth's wing against her skin, giving her the chance to acclimate to the touch of another mind against hers.

Her breath was ragged when she pulled back from the kiss, meeting his gaze steadily as she reached up her hands to hold onto his, her fingers light against his skin before she murmured, "Rather a bed than the console or the railing." A warm smile curling up the corners of her mouth that he returned with a low snort, and a nod to the interior of the TARDIS.

**Author's Note:**

> Originally posted 1 March 2009 in rounds_of_kink on LiveJournal.


End file.
